The Google Now launcher has always been one of my favorites and sadly, it’s getting removed from the Play Store in the coming weeks. According to an email sent by Google to its Mobile Services partners, they’ll be removing the Google Now Launcher app from the Google Play Store within the third quarter of the year. So, you won’t be able to download the Google Now launcher from March onwards.
As per the email sent to Android Police, although the Google Now Launcher will soon be out from the Play Store, the company still plans to provide support for phones and tablets that already have it installed. Although the launcher itself won’t be getting any updates in the future, but the Search app will.
So, the main idea behind this shutdown is to allow third-party Android devices to integrate the Google Now panel on their own launchers, without the need of installing Google’s own launcher.
Being launched around February 2014, the launcher has now aged by exactly three years. Even though the Google Launcher is dying, Google does have its own launcher; the Pixel Launcher. They launched it last year in October for their Pixel and Pixel XL phones, which probably won’t be available for other devices anytime soon.
